Congratulations!

Congratulations on the upcoming purchase of your new property!

Thank you for selecting Meridian Settlement to handle your real estate title work and subsequent settlement.

At this point your team is working diligently behind the scenes. Your real estate agent is setting up inspections for you, your lender/loan officer is having your loan underwritten for you, and your title company (Meridian settlement) is searching the county land records for you in preparation of your settlement.

You are also going to need to do a little groundwork to obtain your homeowner’s/hazard insurance. This insurance will protect you from damage or theft occurring to your property. Please advise us as soon as possible of the company and your yearly premium amount. Your insurance company should be able to quote you over the phone and estimate the premium amount.

You are also going to want to put together a list of utility providers, (e.g., phone, cable, electric, gas, etc.) for your new property and don’t forget to add your current providers to that list. As your settlement date nears you are going to want to contact these providers and cancel, transfer or establish new services. If all the information is in one place, it will make it so much easier for you to accomplish this in a timely manner.

If you haven’t done so already, this may be a good time to start coordination with a moving company.

As your settlement date approaches it is our policy to provide clients with a preliminary settlement statement. We rely on your lender to get us documents and instructions to prepare this statement. If that process is delayed by your lender, we cannot produce this statement in a timely manner. Although unfortunate, it is not uncommon for a lender to get us these instructions the day of settlement. One of the items shown on the settlement statement is the amount of funds that you will need for settlement. This amount is normally the total amount owed at settlement minus your loan amount. The difference will be the money that you need to bring to the settlement. Our title insurance underwriter requires the funds be wired to us, if possible. If a bank wire transfer is impossible, we will accept certified funds drawn on a local or nationally known bank. Every effort should be made to have these funds deposited into our account the day prior to closing so that they can be credited to our account in time for closing. See our list of documents for wiring instructions.

The date, time, and place of settlement will be determined by you, your real estate agent and your lender. Once the settlement particulars have been determined, please make sure that information is communicated with our office.

Please feel free to contact our office if you have any questions. We look forward to working with you and we will see you at settlement.

What do I need on the day of settlement?

We will make every effort to get a HUD-1 settlement statement to your agent or loan officer in advance of settlement. This will show all of the pertinent numbers for your particular transaction, including the “cash from” figure, line 303 on page one of the settlement statement; this is the amount of money that you will need to bring to the settlement. Unfortunately, because the final figures come from many sources and often times we don’t have control over those sources, the final settlement statement may not be available until the day of settlement. If this is the case, please wire the funds based off of your loan officer’s good faith estimate and we will refund you or collect a check for the difference.

We prefer the funds needed for closing to be wired prior to closing, so that all funds are available for immediate disbursement at the time of closing. Meridian Settlement’s wiring instructions can be obtained by calling 443-388-5787 and asking for the funding department. Please call your bank for instructions to complete the wire.